Despite a highly publicized public debut, potential customers lost a great deal of interest in Apple's new touchscreen iPad after it was unveiled, a new study has found.

A survey of more than 1,000 randomly selected customers at the online marketplace Retrevo found that 52 percent of respondents have heard of Apple's iPad, but are not interested in buying one. Another 18 percent said they had not heard of the product, but also were not interested.

Prior to the product's unveiling, 26 percent of those surveyed had heard of the then-mythical "Apple tablet," but were not interested in buying one. That total doubled after the iPad's official Jan. 26 unveiling.

"It's the apps that sell smartphones like the iPhone and it could very well be those same apps that motivate buyers to run down to the Apple Store and get in line to buy a shiny new iPad," the company said. "Whether this device becomes a big hit is anyones guess but based on this study it sure looks doubtful."

The survey found that awareness of the iPad is high -- more than 80 percent of respondents said they had heard of Apple's product. Of those, 21 percent said they need more information on the iPad before they purchase, and 9 percent said they would likely buy one. The company even tracked conversations on Twitter, and found the iPad announcement rivaled talk of the U.S. presidential State of the Union address, held the same day.

The survey results suggest consumers may not see how the iPad would fit into their lives. While 5 percent said they "definitely" need one, 61 percent said they do not think they need an iPad.

In addition, the $130 premium cost to add 3G connectivity was found to be a turn-off for potential buyers. While 12 percent would pay the extra money for 3G and 29 percent would think about it, 59 percent of respondents said they would not pay any extra for 3G.

Retrevo's latest survey was conducted between Jan. 27 and Feb. 3 following Apple's announcement of the iPad, starting at $499 and scheduled to arrive in late March. The results were compared to a previous study done between Jan. 16 and Jan. 20, before the iPad was unveiled.

Last week, another study of medical professionals found that one in five physicians said they are likely to purchase an iPad. Of more than 350 clinicians surveyed, 9 percent said they plan to buy the product immediately, while another 13 percent intend to purchase one in the first year.

Analysts mostly expect the iPad to have a moderate but successful start, selling between one million and five million in its first year. The product's aggressive $499 starting price is seen to be its greatest asset. One analyst believes a sales "catalyst" must emerge -- as the iTunes Store did for the iPod, and App Store for the iPhone -- before the iPad sees significant growth.

Despite a highly publicized public debut, potential customers lost a great deal of interest in Apple's new touchscreen iPad after it was unveiled, a new study has found. ...

I think you guys are reading the survey wrong.

It's pretty clear that the difference between before and after on the first graph is a large number of people who hadn't heard of it (and therefore didn't know if they wanted it), now know about it and have decided they don't want it. So?

The number of people interested in it enough to be customers has actually *increased* from the "before" to the "after." Similarly, the number of people interested but still wanting to know more has also gone up. The number of people stil interested but "sure they aren't going to buy one" has actually gone down.

This is all good news for Apple.

Same goes for the second graph. the number of people saying they will buy it has *increased* and the number people thinking about it has also slightly *increased.*

So... in other words someone is taking a survey and making it look like consumers have less interest.

If you look at the graphs, the question was "Have you heard of it" and then taking a subset of those people and seeing how interested they are. Beforehand 52% of people had not heard of it, however some (about 1/3) were interested in hearing about it. Afterwards, 52% said they had heard and were not interested in it. There was a group at 18% that said they had not heard of it and still weren't interested, and the no, but interested group seemed to disappear without any mention of it being below 1% (Meaning we don't know whether they asked that question or not).

In total the people that wanted to buy the iPad increased to 9% (from 3%), and "wait and see" people increased to 21%. The only way you could say that people are less interested is from the total of "not interested" going from 62% to 70%. Which to honest, is a very minor difference considering that this is a new product announcement that no consumer has been able to put their hand on.

Or you could focus on those who will get one. On the first question it went from 3% to 9%, a 200% increase. On the second question, 3% to 5%, a 66% increase. Let's parse the 'After' numbers some more. From the upper chart box 82% of surveyed said they heard of the iPad. From the lower chart box, 5% of that 82% said they definitely need one. So through the magic of multiplication we can infer that 4.1 percent of those surveyed said they definitely need an iPad. The estimated U.S. adult population as of March 2004 is 217 million. 4.1% of that is 8.9 million who say they definitely need an iPad. How are those numbers looking now? For a brand new product category with a product that practically no one has tried out yet, I'd say those numbers are pretty good.

Still, even with those numbers, the survey is really useless until someone puts it in context. What's the survey profile for other products? And what was actual sales performance compared to the survey numbers?

For a tech writer, the author is pretty innumerate. Either that or just intellectually dishonest for the sake of sensation. Don't know which is worse.

Apple needs to stop this nonsense of debuting a product and then saying it will be available X months later.

People show as much interest in the iPad as the Apple TV, which Apple never advertises and word of mouth is not working. If Apple is going to keep public interest up, they are going to have to either debut it again or start advertising it.

It's pretty clear that the difference between before and after on the first graph is a large number of people who hadn't heard of it (and therefore didn't know if they wanted it), now know about it and have decided they don't want it. So?

The number of people interested in it enough to be customers has actually *increased* from the "before" to the "after." Similarly, the number of people interested but still wanting to know more has also gone up. The number of people stil interested but "sure they aren't going to buy one" has actually gone down.

This is all good news for Apple.

Same goes for the second graph. the number of people saying they will buy it has *increased* and the number people thinking about it has also slightly *increased.*

So... in other words someone is taking a survey and making it look like consumers have less interest.

If you look at the graphs, the question was "Have you heard of it" and then taking a subset of those people and seeing how interested they are. Beforehand 52% of people had not heard of it, however some (about 1/3) were interested in hearing about it. Afterwards, 52% said they had heard and were not interested in it. There was a group at 18% that said they had not heard of it and still weren't interested, and the no, but interested group seemed to disappear without any mention of it being below 1% (Meaning we don't know whether they asked that question or not).

In total the people that wanted to buy the iPad increased to 9% (from 3%), and "wait and see" people increased to 21%. The only way you could say that people are less interested is from the total of "not interested" going from 62% to 70%. Which to honest, is a very minor difference considering that this is a new product announcement that no consumer has been able to put their hand on.

I'd call it a pretty deceiving graph.

This is a fun survey.. more of what people want that doesn't exist is so exciting! but, if the market for under $1000.00 computers amounts to 150 million units per year (correct me if this is wrong with the right number) and most of those are well under $700. And the ipad makes a 3 or 9 or 21% dent in that market after filling its pipeline of early adopters and "choice" customers who go to the ipad versus a competitor laptop/ net book for $500.. that amounts to 4.5, 13.5, or 31.5 million units sold. I would guess ramp up of the ipad will hardly meet demand, and it will be in the space between 4.5 and 13.5 million units sold... TEN MILLION seems like a fairly good bet to me.. This survey doesn't define the real customer for the ipad at all. It also doesn't take into account who is planning to buy a computer, a book reader, a portable appliance to carry on trips.. a game player etc etc etc.. So, the survey is missing entirely the target market. it has not basis that i can determine? http://www.retrevo.com/ is a sight to market products.. by giving the impression that they are an unbiased salesperson informing you of what is available or will be available.. it is so close to meaningless even what i am writing has very little is ANY merit!

$130 extra for 3G is a rip-off. The chip and antenna probably cost $0.50. Hell, the chip is probably just disabled in the non-3G.

Wow, with that much trust in a company you shouldn't buy anything from them. And so, why bother?
As a Dutch saying goes: "zoals de waard is vertrouwd hij z'n gasten". I think that sums it up quit nicely.
Do you have a personal (factual) reason to be so negative?

Of course I already have an iMac for "serious" computer taks, and a Macbook - both with built-in cameras I never use - so my uses for the iPad would be just for content-consumption... because kicking-back on the couch seems like it would be more comfortable with an iPad than my MacBook.

Edit: Made me laugh to remember how people used to point at the video-cameras on iMacs and Macbooks as one of the reasons they were "over-priced", because Apple was forcing us to pay for unwanted hardware...

I'm also curious to see how easy it is to keep a tablet-device steady enough for video-chat, if it is not in a dock. Are people really going to be able to hold them steady enough for long conversations, or are they going to find ways to "prop them up" what chatting?

I wonder if Apple tested cameras in the iPad, and found it was sub-par without some kind of image-stabilization.

People now know the iPad and made up their minds. Some think they'll buy one after they saw what Apple's latest creation was, others say no. So both will go up - that's what you see in the poll. Although the many seem to be disappointed that the new gadget is missing something. It's certainly not such a mass product as the iPhone/iTouch. But it will be highly usable in a couple of environements, such as e.g. education and a niche of people who like to have one at home to read newspapers etc.

The bash-bloggers and self-interested trolls are really out in force over the iPad. "Yep, finally, Apple is dead. They really screwed the pooch on this one. The iPad comes nowhere near the everything-to-everyone device we were promised by all the pundits and anal-ysts. And, by the way, it's WAY TOO CHEAP!

May the 99 cent netbook and Amazon Kindling live forever! We want one of those OTHER tablet devices, not the iPad! You know, the ones with flash (dead technology on the Mac), a 10 megapixel camera, multitasking, 50 week battery, GPS, Intel processor (also dead technology), Microsoft Office, free 3G service, and money-printing capabilities! Yeah, that's the ticket. We want all that NOW! IMMEDIATELY, DO YOU HEAR?

Talk about putting spin on a poll! You guys oughta be working in politics.

Here's some other headlines we could have written for these same figures:

ANNOUNCEMENT OF IPAD TRIPLES THE NUMBER WHO SAY THEY WILL BUY ONE!

AFTER ANNOUNCEMENT, 37% INCREASE IN THOSE WHO ARE INTERESTED OR WILL BUY IPAD

IPAD ANNOUNCEMENT NEARLY DOUBLES CONSUMER AWARENESS OF PRODUCT

So let's go over those numbers:

Those who answer that they will buy an iPad increased from 3% to 9%.

Those who've heard of the iPad and will either buy one or are interested increased from 22% to 30%.

Those who had heard of the iPad increased from 48% to 82%.

Those who were not interested whether they'd heard of the iPad or not increased from 61% to 70%.

AppleInsider's critical headline relies almost entirely on the fact that a large number of people who had never heard of the iPad and were not interested in buying one, are now a large number of people who have heard of the iPad and are still not interested in buying one.

In fact, the number of people who have not heard of the iPad and are not interested dropped by 50% (35% to 18%), and the number who have heard of it and are not interested in it doubled (26% to 52%). Taken as a whole, those who are not interested one way or the other only increased from 61% to 70%, or about 15%, not doubled as AppleInsider claims. AI can only claim that the numbers of those who are not interested doubled, by pretending that the numbers of those stating they'd heard of it and were not interested were not filled almost entirely by those who previously stated that they hadn't heard of it and weren't interested, which obviously is not the case.

Apple needs to stop this nonsense of debuting a product and then saying it will be available X months later.

People show as much interest in the iPad as the Apple TV, which Apple never advertises and word of mouth is not working. If Apple is going to keep public interest up, they are going to have to either debut it again or start advertising it.

Are we on the same planet?

Apple has far fewer "available in X months" product announcements than most other companies and people have shown much more interest in the iPad than the Apple TV.

The iPad made an appearance at the Grammys. If that isn't advertisement, I don't know what is. In other product placement news, the iPad is also supposed to show up in 24 at some point. The iPad is also featured an Apples website, not to mention still discussed on any tech site. I would expect Apple to start "advertising" with traditional TV ads closer to the launch date. I really don't think Apple needs help in the marketing department.

Wow, with that much trust in a company you shouldn't buy anything from them. And so, why bother?
As a Dutch saying goes: "zoals de waard is vertrouwd hij z'n gasten". I think that sums it up quit nicely.

Nice.

Quote: "Zoals de waard is, vertrouwt hij zijn gasten."
Literal translation: "Like the innkeeper is, so he trusts his guests."
Meaning: "A person who is untrustworthy is unlikely to trust others."
English equivalent: "You measure other people's cloth by your own yard."

Personally, all the surveys I have seen point to 50-60% of all responders most likely buying an iPad. That is from about 80,000 people on 6-7 sites. I am definately buying one for college and grabbing a refurb iMac to complement it. Student pricing should really pull through for me there. The total cost will be less than if I bought the MacBook Pro I planned on buying before the announcement. To each his own, I say. This fits my needs no matter how much it may be wrong for others'.

Wow, with that much trust in a company you shouldn't buy anything from them. And so, why bother?
As a Dutch saying goes: "zoals de waard is vertrouwd hij z'n gasten". I think that sums it up quit nicely.
Do you have a personal (factual) reason to be so negative?

J.

What does trust have to do with anything I said?

Quote:

Originally Posted by RichL

The hardware is cheap, the licensing and testing is not. Even 3G USB modems for laptops aren't exactly cheap.

Thank you for an actual response to my post. You're right that testing and validation are expensive. However, given Apple's greater-than-50% margin on the base hardware, I think they can eat that cost pretty easily in the name of greater volume.

So almost 10% say they will buy one?
If that reflects the population at large, Apple will have the greatest hit ever. There are about 250 million people over the age of 18 in the US.
So, sales of 25 million at release?
I'm buying some more Apple stock!

The only thing that's interesting is to read the comments and see how so many people "in technology" still have such underdeveloped critical thinking skills and still don't understand what the iPad is and what it represents in the progress of computing.

Only you could take the lead line from the article "Consumers lose interest in iPad after Apple's unveiling - survey" and twist it into something fanboyish. I've got to hand it to ya.

To be absolutely fair, the information does indicate a collapse of interest, but only among those that knew the least about it, or nothing about it, prior to it's launch. This survey and the accompanying graphs show the collapse of the hype for the iPad and a solidifying of the support for it amongst the market segments likely to actually purchase it. So yeah, it accurately charts the terrific letdown of when fantasy becomes reality.

Every so often the definition what what Jobs thinks is a great product and the public's opinion don't quite mesh (like AppleTV or the cube). The iPad, at least in its initial configuration might be one of those. Some products start out slow and become a hit later when evolve into something much more useful, like for instance the iPhone. My fear though is that Apple won't fully understand why this is underwhelming to a lot of folks.